EdCone.com

A Superior Court judge has ordered the editor of a local blog to divulge the names of several people who posted defamatory comments about a former Vance County commissioner.

Thanks to HJ for the pointer.

Home in Henderson is soliciting donations to help cover legal costs related to the case.

Does this mean Geddings didn't do wrong, or did he just catch a break when the Supremes gutted the particular law used to convict him?

"Nobody spends their holidays delivering hot meals to 40-year-olds."

Louis CK and NSFW are pretty much synonymous, so don't click if profanity is an issue. That said, it's about the cleanest clip in this collection, except for this one.

The lighter side of the Kagan confirmation hearings.

Reversing its oft-repeated position that it was acting only on behalf of its clients in its exotic dealings with the American International Group, Goldman Sachs now says that it also used its own money to make secret wagers against the U.S. housing market...

...the wagers were part of a package of deals... AIG's losses on those deals [were] ultimately borne by taxpayers as part of the government's bailout of the insurer.

Thank goodness that can't happen again Business as usual: "Goldman's proprietary trades with AIG in 2005 and 2006 are among those that many members of Congress sought unsuccessfully to ban during recent negotiations for tougher federal regulation of the financial industry."

If insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, what do we make of this?

The world's rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.

GSO press release (full text after the jump):

[M]embers of the Greensboro Police Department’s Vice/Narcotics Division have conducted an investigation into “Amy Fields Escorts Greensboro Companions”...

...[After a June 24 raid] three individuals have been charged with prostitution related offenses...

From the Amy Fields Escorts website:

We are sorry to announce that on June 26th at 10:46pm Amy Fields was in a heart breaking car accident in Mecklinburg (sic) County VA! She passed away...We are not sure how things will go from here but we will do the best to accomidate (sic) you in every way we can...

Lisa Scheer photographed Ben Holder recently in Glenwood.

 

We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it. Meanwhile, Research 2000 has refused to offer any explanation.

Polling problems at Daily Kos.

More from Nate Silver:

I find the results of the investigation conducted by Grebner, Weissman and Weissman to be highly compelling and it confirms other oddities that I had detected in Research 2000's polling.

"Jim Cramer single-handedly created the concept of Dykstra-as-financial genius." 

We'll always have '86.

Thanks to EH for the pointer.

Lacking imagination: "So why don’t monkeys and apes masturbate even nearly as much as humans?"

I keep hearing rumors that the downtown hotel project is not dead. Latest is that the developers will be at the upcoming meeting of the Guilford County bond authority board...

During the recession, the economy lost a total of 7,281,000 million jobs. Of these, 2,102,000 or 28% were construction workers. Given the massive inventory overhang in the existing home sales market it is highly doubtful that we'll see large construction employment gains in the near future.

That's pretty much what I suspected.

This is, well, depressing: 

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

But we can't afford to spend...can we?

At the end of the day I have the same question I've had for a couple of years: what powers a sustainable recovery?

I remember finding Airplane! very, very funny when I saw it at the Janus on first run. It still makes me larf. Links to 30th anniversary stuff, including this comparison reel showing how source material from Zero Hour! gets funnified without being changed very much, here.

I think this was the first YouTube video ever posted at this blog:

Business as usual: "Dem Senate reps talked a big game and then folded, letting the chance to take the lead on ethics reform slip through their hands."

Floundering: "The conditions in digital media, essential to just about any future growth for newspapers, are getting worse for papers instead."

A neighbor spotted a gray fox in her driveway this weekend. That's unusual for this long-settled part of town, even in an era when wildlife has learned to live with development.

Speaking of which: I don't remember seeing a lot of hawks around here when I was a kid. Now they're pretty common. What happened? 

I was driving home from Durham last month and saw a hawk flying north across I-85 with a snake in its talons. That was kind of cool, although probably not from the snake's POV.

UPDATE from Steve Harrison, in the interesting thread below: Raptor populations (especially hawks) have been recovering nationwide since DDT was outlawed in the early Seventies...the red-tailed hawk has adapted to suburban and even urban territories nicely.

"Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government."

More:

The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly "at" war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe.

Via Facebook, Pricey Harrison says she's "delighted to learn the annual $10 million tax payer subsidy to UNC system booster clubs is coming to an end."

I share her delight.

Hardister: "I have decided that eliminating the current liability cap for damages caused by an oil company is the best course of action."

Previously, previously.

The conversation was sparked by a bill sponsored by Hardister's opponent in the NC57 House race, Pricey Harrison, which would remove the cap.

Lisa has a couple of rows of vegetables in at a friend's farm in Browns Summit, so we were almost halfway to Reidsville when the dinner bell rang and we ended up at Short Sugar's on rib night, about which one cannot complain.

We drove around town for a while, planning future photographic and rib-eating excursions to one of the area's more interesting places. We cruised the huge old American Tobacco plant and criss-crossed the rail line ordained by Jefferson Davis, rolled through neighborhoods that could have been pulled from the work of Walker Evans and Harper Lee.

On the way home we turned off the AC and drove with the windows down and I bored Lisa with tales of General Scales and Junius Scales and the naming of Irving Park, and I found myself singing the old NC tourism jingle that rhymed "poem" with "home," which led me by some odd neural pathway to sing the Livingston Taylor NCNB jingle, and then the Pilot Life jingle, at which point she politely shushed me.

Too bad, I had the Valleydale jingle ready to go.

Starts well, gets really fun just after the 5:00 mark.

As shocking as Mr. Naman's insistence on taking Israel out of Judaism may seem, it actually adheres to a consistent strain within Jewish debate. Whether one calls it anti-Zionism or non-Zionism — and all these terms are contested and loaded — the effort to separate the Jewish state from Jewish identity has centuries-old roots.

Questioning Israel from within the American Jewish community.

Hastings responds to Brooks: "don't report what you see or hear, or you might upset the powerful."

Related:

Think about what the Politico is saying: an experienced beat reporter is less of a risk for a powerful figure like McChrystal because an experienced beat reporter would probably not want to “burn bridges” with key sources by telling the world what happens when those sources let their guard down.

Play IBM's Watson computer at Jeopardy.

Heads up -- spelling counts, which cost me a question I knew. 

I knew more of the answers than it did, but I ran up the score by answering faster. Just like the real game -- speed counts.

Save the whales (and the people): "The consequences of the metals could be horrific for both whale and man."

It may seem redundant to include an Adam Sandler movie in our Bad Review of the Day feature, but remember, it's the review, not the work reviewed, that qualifies;

Anyway:

It doesn’t get worse than "Grown Ups," Adam Sandler’s sloppy entry into this year's man-child-comedy sweepstakes. Lazy, mean-spirited, incoherent, infantile and, above all, witless...

Meanwhile, Scott Card and I finally agree on a movie, although how he knows the 3-D version he did not see is no good is a puzzler.

His question about free will and toy loyalty struck me, too. Card calls his own framing of these issues in terms of slavery "weird," but the real problem with it is that toy owners do not even suspect that the toys are sentient beings, so there is no rationalization required when treating them like objects. Whatever drama exists around this existential question -- and I agree, there is some -- it's all among the toys, which must struggle for meaning like small, plastic Stephen Cranes.

Bonus Toy Story 3 review: "[T]he film displays the same careless sexism as its predecessors."

There's a reasonable argument that Pixar films are boy-centric, although that critique overlooks the strong women in The Incredibles (which deserves more criticism for its ubermenschen mythos than its sexism).

But [spoiler alert!] it may be worth noting that the villain of TS3 is a male -- a male bear, but still -- not to mention a rip-off of the (male) villain of TS2, with the same abandonment issues faced by Jessie in that movie.

Finance reform cheat sheet.

Long form: "[T]he most sweeping overhaul of U.S. financial regulation since the Great Depression, reshaping oversight of Wall Street."

Close to home, "a number of new rules that will directly affect consumers."

Big picture: "US lawmakers also made concessions to Wall Street."

"The prospect of getting banished to hell doesn't bother Phillip Drum," writes Nancy McLaughlin in the lede of this morning's N&R article about North Carolina atheists (print/e-reader only).

Of course not. He's an atheist, so we can assume he regards "the prospect of getting banished to hell" in much the same way he regards "the prospect of getting gored by unicorns."

An odd lede for a news article, imposing a religious theme on a story about a group uninterested in religion.

More than a year and a half after he was arrested in Tehran, Hossein Derakhshan, an influential Iranian-Canadian blogger also known as Hoder, was put on trial on Wednesday.

Not really the place you want to go to court.

Previously: "Hossein Derakhshan tried hard to make it to Greensboro for ConvergeSouth. For his efforts, he's been banned from the US for at least six months."

"The embodiment of the conservative dream in America is Texas."

So begins the 2010 Texas GOP platform (PDF). 

It continues: "Throughout the world people dare to dream of freedom and opportunity. The Republican Party of Texas unequivocally defends that dream..."

Well, not quite unequivocally. It depends on what you dream about, and what you want freedom and opportunity to do.

The platform supports outlawing certain private, consensual sex acts between adults. Also, strip bars and porn.

That would seem to contradict the stated belief in "limiting the expanse of government power," wouldn't it?

It's one poll, and it's Rasmussen, but still:

Elaine Marshall appears to have received a bounce in support following her Democratic Primary runoff victory Tuesday and is now even with incumbent Republican Richard Burr in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race.

Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill:

House and Senate conferees will soon determine whether two of the most important pieces of the legislation are as robust as reformers say they need to be, or whether big banks and other industries prevail in their push for loopholes, carve outs, and other exemptions.

UPDATE: "Isner wins 70-68! After 11 hours 5 minutes  Again Mahut comes to the net and again Isner passes him, coolly, calmly and collectedly. And the match is over. Poor Mahut looks all bemused now, as if he doesn't know what to do with himself. There is now going to be a presentation to mark the occasion - mementos to be given to Isner, Mahut and Mo Layani the chair ump."

Wimbledon liveblog. Isner and Mahut, day three. Live scores here.

Longest Metafilter thread I've seen, too.

Wikipedia's trying to keep up.

Investing in the New Normal:

The king of bonds is now talking up stocks as a better long-term investment...

...In keeping with Pimco’s bearish view on America, the firm doesn’t plan to create funds with a focus on U.S. blue chips.

Gross himself sounds a little like Krugman:

Fiscal tightening, while conservative in intent, leads to lower and lower growth in the short run. Tougher sovereign budgets produce government worker layoffs, pay cuts, reduced pension benefits and a drag on consumption and the ability of the private sector to accept an attempted hand-off from fiscal authorities. Recession becomes the fait accompli, and the deficit/GDP ratio moves ever higher because of skyrocketing risk premiums and a plunging GDP denominator. In many cases therefore, it may not be possible for a country to escape a debt crisis by reducing deficits!

I'm a little repressed. It works for me. I write a lot in the first person, but I keep a screen around parts of my life.

I believe there is value in what Mark Dery calls "the membrane between private 'I' and public self," and I share his concern over "electronic solipsism in public spaces," and I know all about the not-entirely-healthy compulsion to publish online.

But I think Dery misses the point when it comes to Jeff Jarvis and his posts about cancer and, well, as Jarvis says:

Dery reveals far more about himself than I reveal about me. All you know about me is that my penis doesn’t work well. What we know about Dery is that he’s prudish, disapproving, controlling, Victorian, media-obsessed, retrograde, predictable, snippy, snarky, and self-righteous with some apparent penis and anus problems he should be discussing with his shrink.

It helps that Jarvis is a funny, fluid writer. He's discussing something that needs to be discussed. I'd guess that he's helped a lot of people. And nobody, including Dery, is forced to read it.

"A primary commitment to reporting therefore distinguishes the work of the journalist."

Jay Rosen drills down on some questions about political journalism.

More: "[I]t should be routine to ask, 'am I creating a false symmetry here, am I positing a phony mean?'"

1937 again: [A] significant proportion of the economics profession has spent the last three decades systematically destroying the hard-won knowledge of macroeconomics.

Obama "has fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his combat commander in Afghanistan, in such a way that not only will the general go unmissed but his name will likely soon be forgotten."

There's still that whole "why are we in Afghanistan?" thing, though.

I had a good phone conversation with Jon Hardister, who says his goal in discussing the oil-company liability cap is to "slow down and take a look at it." The candidate seems to welcome the public debate. He says he's seen some good points raised at blogs, that he's spoken to folks at the John Locke Foundation and taken some time to think about it, and that he'll post his conclusions soon at his blog.

We also discussed some ideas for campaign blogging. Nothing fancy, just stuff like links and blogrolling and using the site to document the daily life of the campaign in words and pics. As always, my thoughts and observations on campaign blogs are available for free to any candidate who asks.

Just had a 45-minute phone call with the mothership, and still there's time to tell you about the Wimbledon live-blog of the epic Isner-Mahut match, now tied at 54 games apiece.

ESPN will regret its decision to switch the match over to ESPNU.

UPDATE: Isner is the #2 trending topic on Twitter, ahead of Landon Donovan.

Nine hours in, 58 all.

UPDATED II: And we'll resume tomorrow.

Once a global financial meltdown was averted, the strategy for the underlying  crisis was to pretend that there wasn't an underlying crisis, while shoveling free money to the banks for as long as it takes to get them healthy again.

And for the small people -- those without jobs, and those who saved and hoped to compound their savings  -- well, too bad.

This could take a while.

Well, that was exciting.

Marshall law:

The loss was a blow to the national Democratic establishment, which had recruited Cunningham, viewing the more centrist, young Iraq War veteran as a stronger potential opponent for Burr.

Marshall carried the counties in green, Cunningham's are blue; behold the awesome power of the Triad region over state politics!

Jon Hardister responds to my questions about lifting the cap on oil-company liability, without really answering the questions.

Here they are again:

Do you think $100 million is a reasonable cap?

If not, what number do you think might be reasonable?

Even a much, much larger cap would leave a huge amount of the costs for a major spill uncovered.

Who should pay any costs in excess of the cap?

Results:

Marshall appears to have opened a large can of whupass on Cunningham.

D'Annunzio trails by a wide margin in NC8.

Bill "BP Conspiracy" Randall leads in NC13.

Jon Hardister was good enough to email last week to say he'd answer the questions posed here about oil company liability caps.

While we're waiting, here are the questions again:

You mention raising the cap from $75 million to $100 million. I understand that this may just be an example.

Do you think $100 million is a reasonable cap?

If not, what number do you think might be reasonable?

Even a much, much larger cap would leave a huge amount of the costs for a major spill uncovered.

Who should pay any costs in excess of the cap?

You mention raising the cap from $75 million to $100 million. I understand that this may just be an example.

Do you think $100 million is a reasonable cap?

If not, what number do you think might be reasonable?

Even a much, much larger cap would leave a huge amount of the costs for a major spill uncovered.

Who should pay any costs in excess of the cap?

"If print publications are going to keep committing suicide, they really ought to stop blaming the web."

How Rolling Stone blew its big story, which is online at last.